‘You may go,’ she says pleasantly, and I walk from the room. I am rather conscious that she tricked me into giving her bad advice, and she knew of it all along. I must remember that she is far more astute than any of us ever credit.

A page in Norfolk livery is idling outside the queen’s rooms. He passes me a folded note and I step into one of the window embrasures. Outside the garden is bobbing with yellow Lenten lilies, daffodils, and in a chestnut tree which is studded with fattening sticky buds there is a blackbird singing. The spring is coming at last, the queen’s first spring in England. The summer days of picnics and jousts and hunting and pleasure trips, boating on the river and the summer progress around the great palaces will start again. Perhaps the king will learn to tolerate her, perhaps she will find a way to please him. I shall see it all. I shall be in her rooms, where I should be. I lean against the polished panelling to read my note. It is unsigned, like every note from the duke.

The king will keep company with the queen only until the moment that France quarrels with Spain. It is agreed. Her time with us can be measured in days. Watch her. Gather evidence against her. Destroy this.

I look around for the boy. He is leaning against the wall and idly tossing a coin, catching one side up and then the other. I beckon him to me. ‘Tell your master that she wants the princesses at court,’ I say quietly in his ear. ‘That is all.’

KATHERINE, HAMPTON COURT,

MARCH 1540

The king is most angry at dinner tonight, I can tell from the way that he leads in the queen and he does not glance over to me as he usually does. I am sorry about this because I have a new gown (another one!) in creamy yellow, and it is gathered under the bust so that my breasts are on display in the most ravishing and shameless way. But it is a waste of time and trouble trying to please a man. When you are at your very best his mind is elsewhere, or when he agrees to meet you he has to go off somewhere else, with less than half a decent excuse. Tonight, the king is so cross with the queen that he hardly looks at me and I have wasted my new gown for nothing. On the other hand, there is a most delicious young man sitting at the Seymour table who is clearly appreciating the gown and the contents; but I have no time for young men any more, sworn as I am to a life of self-denial starting this Lent. I see Tom Culpepper trying to catch my eye but I don’t even look at him. I will not easily forgive him for promising to meet me and then failing me. I shall probably live and die a spinster and it will be his fault.